Terraforming the Moon unsuccessfully. What am I missing here?

[funewchie]

For laughs, I tried to terraform the Moon into a habitable body.
(I obviously moved it out of Earth's orbit, to prevent any gravity messups)

Mostly, I went with locking it's size, but raising it's mass to try and increase it's gravity (as I know it's normal gravity is too weak to hold an atmosphere)
(I guess we can technobabble it away by saying it was infused with dark matter, or something)
---

But, when I added atmosphere (and magnetosphere), I eventually had to raise the mass to roughly 1 Earth before it could hold an atmosphere.
But for some odd reason, the surface temperature was staying at 160F, forcing me to have to move it's orbit around the sun further out to try and compensate (about where Mars's orbit would be).

Once I got that dealt with, I noticed that the surface gravity was much higher than Earth's (9 m/s versus 33 m/s).
If I reduce the mass to reduce the gravity, it won't hold an atmosphere anymore.
-----

I'm sure there's scientific explanations for this I'm overlooking, but I'm not sure what's wrong here.

I would have though if the Moon's gravity was about the same as Earth's, it would hold an atmosphere.
I'm also still not sure why the temperature kept going up, despite being the same distance from the Sun as Earth is.

What exactly am I missing here?

[SamTheGuy]

This might not be unreleated but did you check out tutorials on youtube (if theres any).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ygJew0aKg
this might be a good video

[Chocice75]

That's the greenhouse effect. You can counter it by adding climate (via object modding) and then lowering the greenhouse effect.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by SamTheGuy:

This might not be unreleated but did you check out tutorials on youtube (if theres any).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8ygJew0aKg
this might be a good video

I didn't know there were tutorials for this, to be honest.
I only knew about this game (well...simulator) from watching a fellow play this on YouTube.

Originally posted by ChocIce75:

That's the greenhouse effect. You can counter it by adding climate (via object modding) and then lowering the greenhouse effect.

So, it's not necessarily a science flaw, but an engine issue?

I'm more curious if my science is off.
I understand the engine might have issues here and there, but I was just trying to figure if my science was accurate.

I figured if the Moon's gravity was the same as Earth's then it should, in theory, be able to hold an atmosphere.
And if it's in the same part of the Sun's lifezone, then it should, again, in theory, be the same temperature as Earth gets (maybe a littler chillier, as it has less surface area for the Sun to heat at once)

Like I said, I was just wondering about the science.
If it's just a flaw with how the game handles physics, that's fine.

[Chocice75]

Whoops, read your post wrong.
Anyway, I guess it's fine to have the higher gravity. I commented on how the Moon had a really high temperature.

[davidb11]

For what it's worth, all the trips to the moon over the years had basically doubled the moon's atmosphere. :P
That's how thin it's atmosphere is.

I say basically, because it doesn't stay long.

But yes, you need a strong enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere, and close to Earth's would do it.
The surface temperature of the moon would also naturally be much higher than the Earth's if it had Earth's gravity because of the reflection index of moon rock being a lot lower than Earth's forests, oceans, and ice.

So, it doesn't reflect the light and other radiation back out into space. So it traps it against the surface, which creates very high temperatures.

Also, the moon gets to around 250F during the day in the real world. So, 160F isn't that bad.

[BlueMarble]

Locking the size is NEVER what you'd want to do when terraforming the moon. Rather, you have to take into account these facts.

1. The Moon can hold onto an earth-atmosphere INGAME, but any water you add will evaporate, as the moon's gravity is just too small to hold onto any water.

Solution to #1 = Increasing mass. There's no other way besides mass. The lowest mass you can have before water evaporates is 4 - 4.49 Moons, so around Mercury's mass.

2. The moon has varying temperatures for day/night cycles, ranging from 150 *C to -200 *C, which can lead to some problems in your terraforming.

Solution to #2 = Increasing/Decreasing Albedo, or removing atmospheric pressure. If your terraformed moon ever tends to get to hot, try increasing albedo, and if it gets too cold, decrease. Whenever I terraform one of my objects I tend to try to find the median between low albedo and high albedo, to get the perfect temperature. Removing atmospheric pressure does trap in less heat, but it does decrease ESI and Life Likelihood.

Lastly, 3. THAT DARN BINARY ORBIT AROUND EARTH. Whenever I want to keep the moon in orbit around earth, and have it terraformed, I increase mass, and the earth tends to want to go binary with the moon.

Solution to #3 = Do NOT make the moon extremely massive. Keep it around 4.49 - 5.89 moons of mass, and have its orbit around 25.9 days. Select auto orbit and afterwards everything should be completely fine.

[Unexpected]

It can be very tricky to terraform another world, what i did was increase its mass to one earth, make its density similar, copy the composition almost exactly, 98.4 kpa atmospheric pressure, accurate magnetic poles and gauss, and you should be close

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Unexpected:

It can be very tricky to terraform another world, what i did was increase its mass to one earth, make its density similar, copy the composition almost exactly, 98.4 kpa atmospheric pressure, accurate magnetic poles and gauss, and you should be close

That's what I did, actually.

But if I had it's mass at anything less than 1 Earth, then it loses atmosphere.
And with the mass at 1 Earth, the surface gravity is 3 times Earth's, and it holds too much heat, despite the albedo.
I had to move the Moon into practically Mars' orbit to cool it to Earth levels.

Originally posted by BlueMarble:

Locking the size is NEVER what you'd want to do when terraforming the moon. Rather, you have to take into account these facts.

1. The Moon can hold onto an earth-atmosphere INGAME, but any water you add will evaporate, as the moon's gravity is just too small to hold onto any water.

Solution to #1 = Increasing mass. There's no other way besides mass. The lowest mass you can have before water evaporates is 4 - 4.49 Moons, so around Mercury's mass.

2. The moon has varying temperatures for day/night cycles, ranging from 150 *C to -200 *C, which can lead to some problems in your terraforming.

Solution to #2 = Increasing/Decreasing Albedo, or removing atmospheric pressure. If your terraformed moon ever tends to get to hot, try increasing albedo, and if it gets too cold, decrease. Whenever I terraform one of my objects I tend to try to find the median between low albedo and high albedo, to get the perfect temperature. Removing atmospheric pressure does trap in less heat, but it does decrease ESI and Life Likelihood.

Lastly, 3. THAT DARN BINARY ORBIT AROUND EARTH. Whenever I want to keep the moon in orbit around earth, and have it terraformed, I increase mass, and the earth tends to want to go binary with the moon.

Solution to #3 = Do NOT make the moon extremely massive. Keep it around 4.49 - 5.89 moons of mass, and have its orbit around 25.9 days. Select auto orbit and afterwards everything should be completely fine.

Well, the thing is, I wanted to lock it's size. Otherwise, when I increased it's mass, it's size would increase, too.
And while I could easily terraform the Moon by making it become an Earth-like planet, that would defeat the purpose of the experiment.

(Kinda like someone once did with attempting to terraform Pluto, and they just made it the same size as Earth. Which kinda defeated the whole purpose, to be honest.)

I figured I could "technobabble" it away by saying "The moon was infused with dark matter". So, it's mass increased, but not it's size)

As I said, I mostly was trying to see if this was an engine issue, or a flaw in the science.

(I figured if it's gravity is the same as Earth's, then it would be able to hold an atmosphere like Earth does)

[Unexpected]

terraforming the moon always does make it hot no matter what you do with it, i managed to get it to about 80% earth similarity but it always hovers around 90-100 degrees c, a tricky part being the realism of being tidally locked so it faces the sun quite often

[funewchie]

Originally posted by Unexpected:

terraforming the moon always does make it hot no matter what you do with it, i managed to get it to about 80% earth similarity but it always hovers around 90-100 degrees c, a tricky part being the realism of being tidally locked so it faces the sun quite often

I did speed up it's rotation to roughly match Earth's, too. (Well, maybe half of that speed, since it is smaller)

Granted, by the time I got it's mass increased, and moved far enough from Earth to not affect it, it de-orbited Earth and orbits the Sun now.

[davidb11]

To be fair, the moon is large enough to qualify as a planet if it was in orbit around the Sun by itself. :P
So, The Earth-Moon system is a binary planet system. We don't normally refer to it as that, but it's far different than any of the other planets with moons. Especially Mars, the only other closest to Earth at all.
If Mars had a moon like ours, it would have crashed into the surface a long time ago and then Mars probably would have gained a stronger atmosphere, and potentially, I.E greater than 0.004% chance, habitable sections in some places. As opposed to right now, where Total Recall was not 100% wrong on what would happen if you decided to go hang out on Mars's surface without a space suit. :P
It's just less silly than the movie, with exactly the same end result.

[funewchie]

Originally posted by davidb11:

To be fair, the moon is large enough to qualify as a planet if it was in orbit around the Sun by itself. :P
So, The Earth-Moon system is a binary planet system. We don't normally refer to it as that, but it's far different than any of the other planets with moons. Especially Mars, the only other closest to Earth at all.
If Mars had a moon like ours, it would have crashed into the surface a long time ago and then Mars probably would have gained a stronger atmosphere, and potentially, I.E greater than 0.004% chance, habitable sections in some places. As opposed to right now, where Total Recall was not 100% wrong on what would happen if you decided to go hang out on Mars's surface without a space suit. :P
It's just less silly than the movie, with exactly the same end result.

True.

Earth's moon is unusually large for a moon (that is, in relation to the planet it orbits).
It's theorized that the moon's gravity and orbit helps to stabilize the Earth's axial tilt.

As for Mars, to be fair, it's pretty far from the Sun.
Even with a decent atmosphere, it'd still be freezing cold there.
----

To be honest, my Moon terraforming experiment was inspired after I played Lunar: Silver Star Harmony.

In that story, when the Earth was undergoing a new Ice Age, a goddess used her power to make the Moon livable, and sent people to live on the newly terraformed moon (the titular silver star). Where people can look up and see the blue star (Earth) in the sky.

And so I was inspired to see if it could be done, in a more "science-y" way. (i.e. without relying on a goddess' power to sustain life)

[davidb11]

Yeah, Mars is right outside the Goldilocks zone a large portion of it's year. :P
So, it's a bit on the cold side, even if it had a stronger atmosphere.

As for the idea of terraforming the moon, it's a complicated mess for certain to do it with science. :P
But not as complicated as time travel, which requires you to be at the top of the Kardashev scale apparently. :P
For reference, a Dyson Sphere, of whatever it actually is, is a Type 2 Civilization. :P
The scale goes up to 4. :)
Imagine the sheer power a Type 4 civilization would have. They would be the Goddess from the Lunar series. :P
That's not even a joke. That's what they would be to us, a meager Type 1.

[funewchie]

Yeah, I'm going to have even more fun one day, when I try to re-create some of the star systems from the Star Wars Legends mythos.

Namely: Corellia (5 habitable planets (with two in binary orbits), the Maw Cluster (17 black holes, plus Kessel and it's star), and the star system from The Crystal Star (with a dying white dwarf star, a black hole, and an ancient star that somehow crystallized.)

[davidb11]

Wow. A dying white dwarf star. Those tend to take about 2 trillion years to die. :P
George Lucas can be given a free pass for not being knowledgable relating to star formation and death. :P